Indian football’s exclusion from Asia’s top two club competitions for the 2027–28 cycle is not a sudden collapse.
It is the inevitable outcome of a decade of institutional drift, commercial complacency, and structural mismanagement. As of December 2025, India stands 14th in the AFC West Region and 25th overall, a position that strips Indian clubs of direct entry into the AFC Champions League Elite and AFC Champions League Two, relegating the country to the third-tier AFC Challenge League.
For the first time in modern Asian football, India one of the continent’s largest markets has been rendered competitively irrelevant.
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The AFC’s club competition slots are governed by a strict coefficient system. Since 2024–25, the confederation has adopted an eight-year weighted model, replacing the earlier four-year cycle. The intention was to reward sustained performance. For India, it instead exposed years of underachievement.
Between 2017 and 2025, Indian clubs failed to consistently win matches in continental competitions. Occasional group-stage appearances masked a deeper problem: India earned participation points, not performance points. As stronger Southeast Asian leagues like Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia accumulated wins in higher-tier tournaments, India’s coefficient stagnated. By December 2025, India’s weighted total stood at 20.627 points, significantly behind Thailand (56.055), Vietnam (38.020), and even regional peers like Kuwait and Turkmenistan.
Under the AFC structure, this gap is almost impossible to close quickly because wins in the third-tier Challenge League are worth only one-third of those in the Champions League Elite. India is now trapped in a low-yield cycle .
The ISL Shutdown and the Financial Cliff
The competitive decline cannot be separated from the commercial collapse of Indian football in 2025. On December 8, the 15-year Master Rights Agreement between the AIFF and Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL) expired. That deal guaranteed the federation ₹50 crore annually, funding everything from grassroots programs to national teams.
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A September 2025 tender attracted zero bids, largely due to uncertainty surrounding AIFF governance and ongoing Supreme Court oversight. Investors were unwilling to commit capital without clarity on league control, revenue rights, and regulatory stability. The result was catastrophic: the Indian Super League season never began, clubs froze operations, and players went months without competitive football .
Without a functioning domestic league, Indian clubs entered continental tournaments underprepared or failed to participate altogether, directly damaging India’s AFC coefficient.
The collapse of the club ecosystem inevitably dragged down the national team. In November 2025, India suffered a 0–1 defeat to Bangladesh in Dhaka, their first loss to the neighbour in 22 years. By year-end, India’s FIFA ranking had plunged to 142, the lowest in nearly a decade.
This was not a tactical failure. It was a structural one.
Players lacked match fitness, coaches lacked continuity, and preparation camps were sporadic. The departure of Manolo Márquez midway through the year, followed by an interim regime with no authority or long-term mandate, ensured that India entered Asian Cup qualifiers undercooked and directionless .
Governance Deadlock: AIFF vs Clubs
As the crisis deepened, ISL clubs attempted to salvage the league by proposing a club-owned model, offering the AIFF a regulatory role and a fixed annual grant. The proposal was rejected by the federation, which argued that surrendering commercial control would undermine its constitutional authority.
The AIFF responded by forming committees and floating short-term league formats regional splits, centralized venues, reduced fixtures none of which addressed the core problem: no broadcast deal, no guaranteed revenue, no investor confidence. Clubs, already bleeding financially, refused to operate in a vacuum .
Continental Consequences Are Now Locked In
The AFC slot allocation for 2027–28 confirms the damage. India now holds only a 0+1 slot in the AFC Challenge League, meaning its champion must play a playoff just to reach the group stage of Asia’s third-tier competition. In contrast, nations India once competed with Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia now enjoy multiple entries across ACL Two and Challenge League tiers. Indonesia’s rise from 25th to 18th in one cycle demonstrates that recovery is possible, but only with a functioning league and consistent continental participation. India has neither .
The Irony: Talent Still Exists
The most damning aspect of this collapse is that Indian football talent has not disappeared. The women’s national team qualified directly for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026. The U-17 men lifted another SAFF title and beat Iran to qualify for the Asian Cup. East Bengal’s women made history in continental competition.
Without a professional men’s league, these players have nowhere to graduate. The system breaks precisely at the point where development should convert into elite performance.
Vision 2047 vs Reality
AIFF’s much-publicized Vision 2047 which aimed to make India a top Asian football nation by the country’s centenary now reads as detached from reality. Almost every key performance indicator for its first phase has failed: league stability, club competitiveness, continental results, and financial sustainability.
Indian football is no longer competing with Asia’s elite. It is fighting for survival.
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India’s removal from Asia’s top club competitions is not a punishment from the AFC. It is a reflection. Of weak governance, of commercial over-reliance, and of years spent mistaking scale for strength.
Unless Indian football confronts these failures honestly by rebuilding league governance, restoring investor confidence, and prioritizing competitive outcomes over optics the current ranking may not be the bottom.
It may be the new normal.
